Once seen, never forgotten \u2013 the 1931 Frankenstein is 95 years old, but still one of the most instantly recognisable of classic horrors. Whether it\u2019s the sight of lanky Boris Karloff lumbering into the frame with his squared-off head, neck bolts and oversized leaden shoes, or the sound of a thunderclap and Colin Clive exclaiming \u201cIt\u2019s alive!\u201d as the monster comes to life one stormy night in the laboratory \u2013 the film still raises hairs on the back of the neck.<\/p>\n
However, this classic has arguably long been missing one element: a continuous musical soundtrack \u2013 the original movie had dialogue but no music. In 2001, the American composer Michael Shapiro<\/a> wrote a full-length score, which he will be conducting alongside the film for the first time in London next month, at Cadogan Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. \u201cIt becomes one artistic expression, one artistic experience,\u201d he says. \u201cThe film and the music, together, and the audience forgets that I am there.\u201d Shapiro says his music emphasises what is already up on the screen. \u201cSuddenly the film jumps out in a way it never did before.\u201d<\/p>\n Karloff\u2019s daughter will also be in London to talk about her memories of her famous father. Sara Karloff, who was born in 1938, did not see Frankenstein herself until she was 19, because her strict girls\u2019 school didn\u2019t approve of scary movies. Eventually, she watched it alone, on TV. \u201cIt was a rather strange way for my father\u2019s daughter to see his famous film for the first time. By that time I\u2019d heard so much about it,\u201d she says. \u201cI watched it rather studiously and understood why it was so popular and so important a film. But I was not scared by it \u2013 I enjoyed it immensely.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Shapiro conducting Frankenstein.<\/p>\n Mary Shelley\u2019s novel became the basis for James Whale\u2019s film, in which ambitious scientist Henry Frankenstein and his hunchbacked assistant go grave-robbing to find the parts for a homemade human. But the creature is accidentally given the brain of a deviant criminal and when he escapes from the lab, he cannot control his impulses. Beautifully designed and photographed, the film is exciting and unexpectedly moving, if not quite as terrifying as it was in 1931.<\/p>\n In one famous scene, the monster meets a little girl by a lake, and although at first they seem to become friends, tragedy ensues. It\u2019s a bold and still shocking moment. According to Karloff, her father always felt that children got on better with the film than adults, intuiting that the monster is an innocent victim himself. \u201cAdults were kind of horrified by the film and horrified by that scene, but children seemed to understand it,\u201d she says. She adds that seven-year-old Marilyn Harris, who played Little Maria, \u201creally liked my father and wanted to go everywhere with him. She wanted to ride in the car with him, and she always wanted to hold hands with him. She was not the least bit frightened.\u201d<\/p>\n Jacob Elordi, Guillermo del Toro and Sara Karloff at the premiere of Netflix\u2019s Frankenstein last year. Photograph: Roger Kisby\/Getty Images for Netflix<\/p>\n Shapiro was one of the children who got it. Aged nine, he wrote the star a fan letter (\u201cDear Mr Karloff. \u2026 I think you\u2019re a thriller\u201d) and was delighted to get a response, along with an autograph and a picture of him as Frankenstein\u2019s monster. \u201cI\u2019m crazy about the film,\u201d says Shapiro, \u201cmostly because of Boris Karloff\u2019s acting.\u201d Now he gets to pay tribute in another way. Karloff, he says, \u201cgives the creature a soul\u201d. And as a composer, he says, \u201cYou can put that into the music \u2013 as the film progresses, as he shows that, the music changes with him.\u201d<\/p>\n Frankenstein is a foundational text in Hollywood horror, the second film in Universal\u2019s long-running series of scary movies, following Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931). But it is a film made largely by British talent, not least Shelley herself. Karloff was born William Henry Pratt in Dulwich in 1887 and lived in London until he was a young man, starting his acting career in Canada in 1911. That was when he picked up his pseudonym. He combined manual labour gigs with stage work until he got a foothold in the film business in Los Angeles at the end of the decade, working in silents. Frankenstein finally made him a star at the age of 44. \u201cMy father said Frankenstein was his 81st film, and hardly anybody saw the first 80,\u201d recalls Karloff.<\/p>\n Karloff eventually made 167 films, including many more monster pictures, but also one-offs such as the 1968 sniper thriller Targets<\/a> directed by Peter Bogdanovich, which is his daughter\u2019s favourite, because \u201cit really reflects my father\u2019s feelings that the real horror is on the street, not up on the screen\u201d. He also made countless TV and stage appearances. When he finally returned to the UK in the 1950s, he lived in a flat just a stone\u2019s throw from Cadogan Hall in Chelsea, and a cottage in Hampshire, and England became his home once more while he commuted to the US to act. \u201cHe was mad about cricket,\u201d says Karloff. \u201cHe thought he\u2019d died and gone to heaven when he got to go to a cricket match and have cucumber sandwiches and a pint of beer.\u201d Now, the Boris Karloff Foundation supports young people in the performing arts in the UK, and cricket too<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s a masterpiece of humanity\u2019 \u2026 Michael Shapiro.<\/p>\n The film\u2019s director, James Whale<\/a>, was also British, hailing from Dudley. He transferred to Broadway, then Hollywood after his success directing Journey\u2019s End in London in 1928. At Universal he quickly developed a reputation for artistically ambitious pictures, which, like Frankenstein, used the chiaroscuro lighting associated with German expressionism<\/a>.<\/p>\n Clive, who plays Doctor Frankenstein, was born to aristocratic English parents in France but educated in the UK: after making his name on the London stage, he came to Hollywood to star in Whale\u2019s 1930 film of Journey\u2019s End. Frederick Kerr, who plays Henry\u2019s father, and Lionel Belmore, the Burgomaster, were also Britons. Even the film\u2019s editor, Maurice Pivar, was originally from Manchester. Whale sent Clive a note before the shooting began: \u201cAlthough it is largely an English cast, I do not want too much English accent about it \u2026 it is well to talk to as many Americans as you can to get that looseness, instead of what Americans think of as English tightness, in speech.\u201d<\/p>\n The British critics were largely horrified by the film \u2013 and not in a good way. There were reports of faints and walkouts during screenings. But at the New York premiere, critic Mordaunt Hall believed people were laughing \u201cto cover their true feelings\u201d. However, he liked the film, acknowledging it was \u201ca morbid, gruesome affair, but it is something to keep the spectator awake, for during its most spine-chilling periods it exacts attention\u201d.<\/p>\n Sara Karloff says her father never considered it a horror movie at all. \u201cHe felt that the films he did were more terrifying than horrific \u2013 that horror films, as they came along, dumped blood and guts right in the lap of the viewer, and terror films made the viewer use his own imagination to finish the scene.\u201d<\/p>\n She describes it as \u201ca thoughtful film\u201d, which \u201casks many questions. Who really is the perpetrator, and who really is the victim? Who instigates the brutality first?\u201d In 2026, as arguments rage about the limits of the use of technology, and whether we can ever control it, Frankenstein remains unsettlingly timely.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a masterpiece of humanity,\u201d agrees Shapiro. \u201cThat\u2019s why it\u2019s lasted. That\u2019s why it inspired me to write the music.\u201d<\/p>\n